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Month: July 2015

“Trainwreck”—A Comic Collision

  “Trainwreck” is the best and funniest rom-com since “Bridesmaids”, another hilarious feminist film by Judd Apatow, known also for bro-coms like “40-Year Old Virgin”.  And like previous Apatow productions “Bridesmaids” (see my June 20, 2011 review) and “Girls” , “Trainwreck” is both funny and a little sad. The scenes that are the most memorable and vivid, however, are comic fireworks. Written and starring Amy Schumer, “Trainwreck’s” humor is raunchy, pushes the boundaries of conventional one-liners, and is as sexually explicit as Schumer’s Comedy Central TV series. Amy Townsend (Schumer)...

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“Muscle Shoals”–Music Muscle from the Deep South

 [This movie review can be also seen at Josephsreviews.com where I was a guest blogger on July 17,2015) A 2013 documentary about an Alabama musical legacy, “Muscle Shoals“,  brings to light a group of musicians who never had their day in the sun. Two iconic recording studios in the tiny town of Muscle Shoals Alabama—FAME (est. 1959) and its spinoff Muscle Shoals Sound (1960) —became the “must have” sound for, among others, Percy Sledge, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, The Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Aretha Franklin, Paul Simon, Etta James, and many other Rock-and-Roll legendary...

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“Love and Mercy”– Mostly “Good Vibrations”

  If you remember the 1960’s classic album “Pet Sounds” by Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, there is a good chance you will enjoy the movie “Love and Mercy”. In an unusual music biopic of Brian Wilson, “Love and Mercy” structures his life through two highly acclaimed actors, Paul Dano and John Cusack, playing Brian the younger and middle-aged Brian respectively. In a highly innovative flashback structure in which Paul Dano plays twenty-something Brian Wilson and John Cusack plays his fifty-something 1980’s version, we see the backstory of a creative musical genius whose abusive childhood...

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Orange is the New Black (OITNB) –Keeps on Going Strong

    Feminism, sexual perversion, peccadilloes, assault, and experimentation run strong in Season Three (2015). [See my reviews, “Orange is the New Black—Life Behind Bars”, August 7, 2013 and “The Backstory Behind Orange is the New Black”, August 15, 2013.] Nothing like this has been portrayed on television, without a suggestive body shot, excruciating violence, or even the victim’s voice. OITNB scenes of how women can become more compassionate through sex with each other are so powerful, indeed so extraordinary and original, that the sexual scene is secondary to the emotional intimacy....

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